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Talking To Computers?
merlock18 writes "Is it un-natural to talk to a computer? After discussing the outcome of the Jeopardy game with some colleagues, they seem to think it is mildly 'scary' to talk to a computer and have it competently talk back. Is this what everyone thinks? I was thinking to myself how much I would like to be able to even tell my computer to open programs by telling it vocally. A simple idea that I am fairly surprised is not common. Am I a minority in this one? Do people just not like the idea of talking (without cursing) to a computer, let alone have it act or reply? Would anyone else be interested in building their own mini-Watson, or is this just scary?"
I can't speak for anybody else, but a lot of the time I don't *want* people to overhear what I'm asking my computer to do...
Open the pod bay doors, Hal.
Not only privacy but the standard office would sound like a bar of a busy Friday night. Can you imagine loud howard dictating a document just over the cubicle wall?
when swearing at them improves their performance.
All your database are belong to U.S.
Just give it 30 years. Once it becomes publicly available, it only takes one generation for society to get used to new tech.
Personally, I find it impressive but annoying. I'm already driven nuts by people talking on cell phones all day, and I don't want to hear and endless stream of command instructions, either.
I wonder if there has been any research on the uncanny valley for speech...
Every mac OS since 10.0 has had speech recognition - I had some fun with it when it came out, but lost interest after a while. My disenchantment may have had something to do with having to vocalise (for all to hear) every command I made - and can you imagine the yammer of a roomful of computer operators? I'm looking forward to thought-recognition software.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
...especially when they start answering "that tickles!"
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
People talk to their pets all the time, and although most pets have just as much of a chance of understanding what's being said as most computers, that doesn't strike people as odd.
It seems to me that voice recognition is not the most efficient way to interact with a computer, especially when the user interface is well designed. For complicated tasks, and for interacting with computers where you may not have a normal desk or terminal, perhaps. As far as voice-to-text, if the recognition is accurate, it can possibly increase productivity depending on the person and their typing skills. On another not, however, this is a way for paralyzed individuals to interact with computers without the use of traditional means. However, using voice interaction in tandem with other means could be a more efficient route. Having a computer run commands in the background via voice commands while you interact with it in more traditional ways in the foreground.
Speech recognition sucks and always will. I can hotkey my way to any program faster than I can say the name of it. Simply double clicking and icon is super easy. Why do I want to have to say "Computer! Open! Porn!!!" when I have a shortcut to all my porn on my desktop? it doesn't even make sense. And entering urls? It would take 10min just to get the url at the top of this article in.
On a related note: I fucking hate teamspeak. If I wanted to talk to you retarded assholes I'd call one of those party lines. Fuck that, I want to play a video game. I don't want to talk to people. For whatever rudimentary communication I need I can type.
Oh no... Someone is WRONG on the internet! Watson received the answers via text file, he did not hear Trebek or visually see the answers.
Someday speech will be an important input method. But not any time soon.
If you have to wear a microphone it isn't ready yet.
If you have to use a PTT switch it isn't ready yet.
If you have to repeat or cancel more than 1% of the things you say it isn't ready yet.
If you have to spend as much time proofreading dictation it has taken down and correcting the mistakes, it isn't ready yet.
If you have to speak in an unnatural way it isn't ready yet.
If it won't work in almost any environment it isn't ready yet.
Democrat delenda est
Watson’s avatar, which viewers will see behind a standard Jeopardy! podium, is designer Joshua Davis’ artistic representation of the machine. It does not provide eyes or ears for Watson. Instead, Watson depends on text messaging, sent over TCP/IP, in order to receive the clue. At exactly the moment that the clue is revealed on the game board, a text is sent electronically to Watson’s POWER7 chips. So, Watson receives the clue text at the same time it hits Brad Rutter’s and Ken Jennings’ retinas.
Source: http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-watson-sees-hears-and-speaks-to.html
For another, it negates the only advantage (from a consumer perspective) of touchtone menu systems - the ability to quickly navigate when you know your choice ahead of time; or even when you hear it spoken without having to wait for the full menu of options. It seems that most systems allow touchtone interrupt, but don't allow voice interrupt, so if I press "5" for technical support it's fine - but I can't say "technical support" without being forced to listen to all the options.
gawk; grep; unzip; touch; strip; init,
uncompress, gasp; finger; find,
route, whereis, which, mount; fsck; nice,
more; yes; gasp; umount; head, halt,
renice, restore, touch, whereis, which,
route, mount,
more, yes, gasp, umount, expand, ping,
make clean; sleep
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
(a) Accuracy, (b) Efficiency, (c) Privacy, (d) Noise pollution.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
It's creepy if the computer is trying to pass itself off as a person, because fakeness in social interactions is creepy whether it's a Wallmart greeter or a computer program being fake. If the computer is plainly just presenting itself as a voice interface it won't feel creepy for very long if at all.
I, of course, am now officially older than dirt. A couple of years ago, when I finally got my iPhone, I got the Google search app of course. I used it, it worked, I liked it. When I put the damned phone down, I thought, "If somebody had handed me this when I was fourteen I would have thought it was a phony Hollywood prop." That was when I decided that computers should only be addressed by means of picking up the mouse, pressing one of its buttons, and speaking clearly and distinctly into it in a fake Scottish accent.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
tea, earl grey, hot :D
The beauty of the almighty command line, declarative programming language, and any interface with a well-defined command set is that you get exactly what you asked for, at the expense of modifying your thinking to be more exact than natural language. This is a feature. And it's one that I don't think would translate well to the spoken word. I can say
for file in `ls -1 *.txt`; do echo something about $file; done;
on a keyboard, but I can't even begin to thing how I could get my mouth to say that out loud, unambiguously and consistently every time.
Sitting at a Starbucks:
-Computer, open my bank account.
-Which one?
-Bank of America
-That's a stupid bank account to have, they are broke
-Not as long as Bernanke keeps bailing them out.
-Fine. But your dollars are crap.
-Whatever. Open it.
-It wants your password.o!
-12345
-So the combination is... one, two, three, four, five? That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard in my life! The kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!
-Remind me to change the combination on my luggage. And what's the balance on the account?.
-15 bucks
-Yaho! I am gonna buy me a mouse and I'll make you shut up!
---
A day later:
-Computer, open my bank account
-Same stupid account as yesterday?
-Shut up and open it, and what's the balance?
-Negative 1000
-????!!!!
You can't handle the truth.